A Multi-Fandom Series of The 1960's

Ugh! Here we go… more hard to do lines of Barnabas Collins, which means there are, like, five attempts I had to perform and figuring out which of the ones to pick. Plus it is just that. Sometimes the microphone will pop at the wrong moment, a tick of saliva needs to be removed from the edge of words, or, as in many cases, if you’ve been a listener of mine, two or three separate performances per line are sometimes melded into one, which is a lot harder to do than one might suppose.

A sentence or a fragment of a sentence with another spliced together in sound, not text. Today I got to do this will all four of these characters’ lines to get it right. Maggie’s words are so emotional they had to be re-done again and again. Professor Stokes were the same as I’ve taken more pains with his somewhat gravelly accent. But he goes faster as altering his pitch is simpler than Barnabas. Barnabas seems to need variations in lowering of pitch to really get him right, and sometimes per word! Arg! Still, the picks Stokes has gotten today are far better than in the previous demos. Hurray for The Professor!

And so I’ve had to move audio clips from one file to another. In order to get Barnabas to sound better I now isolate my focus on Jonathan Frid’s performances and listen to his voice by itself. “One Man Show, Jonathan Frid? Hi! One Woman Show, Daryl Wor! Nice to meet you!” ^_^

I wasn’t much into Mr. Frid but I’ve been growing a palish attachment to that fellow. I am in this to help everyone in Collinsport, not just Mr. Big Cake. I think that’s why my pen pal told me after some time had passed, “To me you haven’t even been creating fanfiction, it’s like you’re re-writing the show. You’ve got everyone in there plus all these other people.” And it’s true.

I expressed to another helper, who’d given up on finding a fix-it style series, or even just the reincarnation aspects of Josette in a simpler story, that what I was doing was finding a cut-off point and then weaving a new series in that collects all the problems and sorts through everything. She noticed that right away. She’d been watching Dark Shadows for years, making visual creations and cringed a long time saying, “I wish there was some way to make this better… And then I see all your stuff and cry out, ‘We’re making it better! We’re making it better! It’s working!’ “

Now that was something I’d been longing to hear from someone!

In the Foreword of Anne Jamison’s book Fic:

“Writing and reading fanficiton isn’t just something you do; it’s a way of thinking critically about the media you consume, of being aware of all the implicit assumptions that a canonical work carries with it, and of considering the possibility that those assumptions might not be the only way things have to be.”

Now, mind you, this has only recently begun to change in the world of Dark Shadows. I’m not seeing any DS in the index for this book and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was not something anyone helping to create this book wanted to touch.

I combed enough years and got enough evidence from others, who had also collected stories before the internet, that publicly pairing Barnabas Collins with anyone other than an original character, Dr. Julia Hoffman or Angelique Bouchard would put you into some very hot water. Victoria Winters stories started to catch on, thankfully, and now we have some leakage of Maggie Evans and a non-forsaken, non-dead Josette Dupres. I also recently heard from someone who became very grateful for my work that she was looking for the reincarnation. Now she has the courage to create her own. Doesn’t help me in needed conversation over the radio drama department, but it’s nice!

Anne Jamison continues:

“It’s what David Foster Wallace was getting at in his famous speech, ‘This is Water’: ‘Learning to think… means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you can not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.’ Fanfiction is about exercising this choice. It helps us not to get hosed.”

Well, I dunno about that yet. I got pretty extremely hosed for 19 months and now with the audio I feel even worse sometimes. My adopted children are doing better but I’m rather ruined for another three years since I can’t stop this madness no matter what I’ve tried. And that exercising of choice seems a little lacking to many who use social network sites. It’s like my ride to church says, “Oh, it’s all being thrown at them at once, it’s too much!” So true.

Who are my listeners anyway? Can’t tell very well with followers from blogs and like-clicks a’go-go. I couldn’t do all of what I’m doing without being so curious and gathering tons of evidence. People online sure have a funny way of giving me any evidence of what they enjoy in my audio work.

“Data, data, data. I cannot make bricks without clay.”

Some are just listening for whatever reason, anything Dark Shadows, anything spooky, anything this, anything that, but there are others who have been waiting up to forty years because they love the characters and craved a better world for them. Sadly them not getting much of it before, and the internet scooping our communication skills toward more robotic maneuvers of trying to do “too much”, making the conversation over this long awaited journey almost impossible. And the skimming! I’m told a couple people have so much trouble concentrating they read the text while they listened to the radio show! No surprise! I had to do that to get through Isak Dinesen’s book “Out of Africa.”

I think this scene in Episode 13 is going to take more than a day. Barnabas is getting odd ideas, Julia is rushing with Eliot to find Maggie, and with all of the reincarnation swarming around I still have to pick which audio of this wonderful line sounds best when Julia almost runs over a squirrel and says, “Don’t worry. I missed him. He’s likely a Collins, too! Knowing this GD TOWN!“

There are still lines to splice in from Barnabas. Professor Stokes seems to be less at ease than usual, but it is a dramatic scene for him He’s getting more information about everyone than he likely ever got on Dark Shadows in one fell swoop! LOL! And, of course, what he sees, he likes. This Doctor lady is really with it. Plus she seems to have a thing for this Collins guy who doesn’t have a thing for her. Hmm! I wonder if she’d be interested in someone like me?

That is likely one of the troubles with The Pit of Ultimate Dark Shadows, there is so much going on, like in Dark Shadows, but it is rather compressed. Well, I’ll try to make things easier when I get to episode 17. I see what word count and time estimate would work better.

Until then, I’ll be editing this stuff, looking for pen pals and people who like to chat, and praying for more money and friendship along the way.

I totally agree with you where Vicki is concerned, she is Elizabeth’s daughter. She started out as an intelligent young lady who turned into a stupid person. She wasn’t Vicki anymore and Dan Curtis permanently made certain we would never get to find out.

To a great degree I love how you see Barnabas’ love for Josette. That explains how you were able to capture him in the picture. You feel the same way I feel he felt toward Josette. Keep it up please.

Thank you! Very often in my work I find much negativity via notifications at my inbox and as a result I gird myself up for another attack. Aww… this was nice, instead!

When I was writing The Pit of Ultimate Dark Shadows in text and performing the demos I knew I had to bring Willie Loomis back into the fold. When I channeled his character it was tough because he has so many psychological difficulties. I came to the realization that I had a lot in common with him as a case of lost potential, and from that I suddenly became aware I had so much in common with almost all of the characters on Dark Shadows and their troubles. Uh-oh…

When I began re-writing Margaret Josette Dupres another channeler of characters noticed I’d gotten Barnabas down in first person extremely well. I, myself, had never seen that done except in some poetry a little bit. Then I realized what I had in common with Barnabas to be able to do that.

Barnabas is much adored but not so much by writers of fanfiction I’ve seen. Very often he is cased on by fans for briefly messing with Angelique. There are gobs of characters who do far worse and feel no shame in doing so. Why pick on Barnabas? Because he does feel some shame and self-doubt. He has a romantic sensitivity to the needs of others. For some reason this brings out the bully in people. It definitely happened to me.

I was surrounded by bullies throughout my entire public school career, as well as in my own family. I had that sensitivity and self-doubt as well as the gregarious nature Barnabas loves in Josette and other women similar to her. He often is lost in many problems he has no control over but wants to solve.

I shall definitely keep it up! Thank you! 🙂 I hadn’t meant to write Margaret Josette Dupres but I’m glad that it happened. I do want to publish it somehow and get it out to more people as it healed my marriage and we had a lot of problems. If it helped us in so much complexity I figure it could help a lot of people too.